Paparazzi Bots

The Paparazzi Bots is a series of autonomous robots each standing at the height of the average human. Comprised of multiple microprocessors, cameras, sensors, code and robotic actuators on a custom-built rolling platform, they move at the speed of a walking human, avoiding walls and obstacles while using sensors to move toward humans.

The Paparazzi Bot by Ken Rinaldo at the exhibition, Lisbon Portugal. Curated by Leonel Moura.

They seek one thing, which is to capture photos of people and to make these images available to the press and the worldwide web as a statement of culture’s obsession with the “celebrity image” and especially our own images.

The Paparazzi Bots (web)

The flash autonomously goes off, capturing people’s photos and elevating them to “celebrity” in a kind of momentary anointing by the robots. They were commissioned by The Dynasty Foundation Russia with curator Dmitry Bulatov and The Vancouver Olympics with Malcolm Levy as curator. They had their first showing in Portugal in an exhibition curated by Leonel Moura.

The Paparazzi Bot by Ken Rinaldo at the exhibition, Lisbon Portugal. Curated by Leonel Moura.

The robots also become celebrities through their association to the “famous people” at the exhibition that are captured by the Paparazzi Bots. Each autonomous robot can make the decision to take the photos of particular people, while ignoring other humans in the exhibition, based on things such as, whether or not the viewers are smiling or the shape of their smile.

Orlan was taken by the Paparazzi Bot by Ken Rinaldo at the exhibition, Lisbon Portugal. Curated by Leonel Moura.

When the robots identify a person or group they will automatically adjust their focus and use a series of bright flashes to record that moment.Surveillance technologies straddle a delicate balance that we have in contemporary culture, where we are all photographed without our knowledge by cell phones, hidden cameras and sometimes “celebritized”.

This is a kind of modern baptism with the camera flash and the spectacle of being the focus of the camera becoming a kind of techno anointing.This work explores ideas surrounding the shifting territories of self and machine and how machines can manipulate the other (us) in a grand co-evolutionary dance of emerging robot-human relations.

The recent emergence of social networks and their ability to connect people through software prompts via the worldwide web is a prime example of the co-evolution of humans and their intelligent machines. They capture people who seem all so natural with the stance of the chasing paparazzi.

The brains and micro controller are talking with each other through a four wire corpus callosum. One micro controller handles sensing, motor control, and activation while the other handles integration of motion/distance sensors to allow the shots to be taken. Smile sensors are part of each system and can be adjusted to be on or off or controlled for the amount of smile.

A radio transceiver is on one of the robots for receiving by the projector or large TV.